Sustainability + Resilience
Architecture that is distinctly responsive to its place, people, and purpose.
Every project presents a unique opportunity to make a difference—for the people who inhabit it, the communities it serves, the environment it touches, and the mission it advances. Identifying a meaningful response begins with developing a deep understanding of our clients’ values and the goals of the project. Those insights become the lens through which we shape each decision. The result is architecture that is distinctly responsive to its place, people, and purpose.
Our commitment to sustainability began in 2000 with a landmark opportunity: teaming to develop the world’s first LEED-certified healthcare project. At the time, conventional wisdom held that sustainable hospitals were not achievable. Together, we helped challenge that assumption and redefine what was possible for healthcare design. That momentum quickly grew within the firm, and over the next few years we certified the world’s first safety-net hospital as well as the first LEED for Commercial Interiors project—our own headquarters.
Today, sustainability is inseparable from the way we practice architecture.
We design environments that elevate health and connection, reduce environmental impact and operating costs, and remain resilient in the face of a changing climate. Our work is grounded in the belief that thoughtful design can reconnect people to each other and to the natural world — creating places that enrich lives today while shaping a healthier, more sustainable future for generations to come.
Commitments + Partnerships
- AIA 2030 Commitment
- AIA Materials Pledge
- Arbor Day Foundation
- Mindful Materials Catalyst Forum
- U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC)
Featured Projects
The spaces we spend our time in matter. They shape how we feel, think, and connect. Thoughtfully designed environments can energize and inspire us — reducing stress, improving focus, sparking creativity, and supporting a greater sense of well-being. They can also play a meaningful role in healing by strengthening immune response, easing pain and anxiety, and fostering comfort and calm.
We help our clients harness the power of wellness in the built environment through many interconnected strategies: cleaner air, non-toxic materials, access to daylight and views, circadian lighting support, intuitive wayfinding, acoustic comfort, and the incorporation of biophilia. Together, these elements help us shape spaces that are not only functional, but environments that are human-centered, connected to nature, and feel welcoming and restorative.
Amazon 300 Pine
This workplace brings nature indoors with a 20-foot green wall located for all staff to enjoy. As humans, we are inherently connected to nature yet we spend nearly 90% of our lives indoors. Designing spaces that reconnect people to the natural world is essential. That means not only creating access to views and daylight but also bringing nature into the experience of a space through natural materials, textures, patterns, vegetation, water, and sensory connection to the outdoors. Biophilic design is one of the most powerful and well-documented approaches to supporting human wellness.
Ridley-Tree Cancer Center
This cancer center provides a calming atmosphere for chemotherapy patients, helping to mitigate anxiety, depression, and treatment side effects such as pain and fatigue. Lowering stress hormones has also been shown to restore the body’s natural immune response and energize its fight against cancer. With all services under one roof, including radiation oncology, medical oncology, rotating specialists, and wellness programs, patients can focus on what matters — their path to healing.
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Construction projects utilize an immense amount of resources, and it’s our responsibility to deploy them wisely. This includes a reflection on both embodied and operational carbon, as well as resource depletion.
Reimagining the utility of existing structures can have countless benefits. Often residing in desirable locations, the stories they tell speak to the past while setting the stage for a prosperous future. Not only can adaptive reuse save time, money, and countless resources, it can help to quickly establish your project as an anchor in the community.
When new construction is in order, designing with wood has multi-faceted benefits. Our human connection to natural materials makes it the material of choice for stress reduction and placemaking, while it can also reduce on-site construction noise, time to occupancy, and the need for high-carbon materials.
Design decisions also play an important part in ongoing operational metrics. Concerns over water and energy availability, carbon impact, and cost escalation are ever-present — and conservation, efficiency, load-shifting, production and storage have become important considerations on every project. Futureproofing must be assessed during predesign to avoid missed opportunities.
Amazon 300 Pine
This 475,500-square-foot adaptive reuse project repurposed a historic Macy’s department store into an integrated five-story workplace. To promote community and connection, a full-height communicating stair was cut though the building’s core, further serving as a central light well and becoming a key wayfinding element. A café located at the top of the stairwell ensures frequent use and activity.
Southern Oregon Orthopedics ASC
Drawing inspiration from both classic Pacific Northwest and the craftsman style of architecture, the Southern Oregon Orthopedics ASC utilizes heavy timber, glulams, and wood decking to decrease the environmental impact of the project, while simultaneously integrating biophilic design. Large expanses of glass flank the travel path of patients, further supporting the connection to nature with views of the surrounding natural landscape.
UC Davis Health Folsom Medical Care Clinic
This medical office building is fully electrified and serves as the anchor project for a 34-acre, master-planned medical campus. The building was designed as a comprehensive wellness resource for the burgeoning Folsom community and includes an infusion center, imaging suite, teaching kitchen, and two floors of clinical space. The layout is based on universal clinical modules, guided by functionality and flow, to ensure flexibility for future program changes.
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Every project has the potential to become more than the sum of its parts, creating value that extends beyond the building itself to elevate human experience, enrich communities, advance sustainability, and inspire what’s possible.
As designers, we understand that every decision carries long-term impact. That’s why our process begins with research and deep listening to gain an understanding of the many factors that influence each project, including its history, site, climate, users, stakeholders, regulatory requirements, economics, and operational goals. From there, we work collaboratively to uncover synergies and opportunities that embody client-specific values and go beyond expectations. By combining technical expertise, strategic thinking, and design innovation, we create thoughtful solutions that are both visionary and achievable.
Boulder Community Health West Medical Building at CMC Lafayette
This project utilized emerging hybrid vacuum insulated glass (HVIG) technology and was awarded the Novel 40 Role Model award for 40% reduction in envelope-related energy use by Oak Ridge National Lab’s Building Envelope Campaign.
Sutter CPMC Mission Bernal Campus
This LEED-NC Gold, 222,000-square-foot urban infill project, located in the historically diverse working-class Mission District of San Francisco, provides vital care to the city’s low-income and uninsured communities. It hosts a 35,000-gallon stormwater cistern, received nearly $300,000 in incentive money from PG&E for energy efficiency, and was bestowed with a Construction Industry Project Excellence (CIPE) Award from the Construction Users Roundtable (CURT).
Indigenous Pact Chehalis Hope and Healing Clinic
The extreme difficulty of putting quality construction in place for small projects in rural locations led to a proposal by BA and Bildt for a Modular Prefabricated Productized Industrialized Construction approach for Indigenous Pact’s Tribal healthcare partners.
The approach has yielded a number of service-aligned products, including a Medically Assisted Treatment (MAT) clinic for substance abuse, a Dialysis Clinic, a Primary Care Clinic, and a Free-Standing ED. The products are universally designed for deployment across the continent, able to withstand extremes of temperature, seismicity, and wind or snow loading. The IP Chehalis Hope and Healing Clinic is one example, serving as a methadone clinic on the native lands of the Chehalis Tribe. The facility consists of 12 prefabricated modules, constructed at Bildt’s manufacturing facility and transported for on-site assembly.
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Designing for enduring performance requires proactive thinking. Building codes spend years in development and are based on historical data, isolated from today’s realities such as renovation, replacement, borrowing, insurance and energy costs, mounting stress on the nation’s energy infrastructure, and the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters. Protecting your investment requires a clear understanding of the pressures your project may face, both now and in the years ahead.
For many of our clients, disruption is more than an inconvenience. It can interrupt patient care, limit access to critical services, compromise research, or slow innovation. While we can’t predict every challenge ahead, we can design with resilience in mind by identifying the most likely risks and creating environments that are better prepared to adapt, recover, and endure.
At the same time, change itself is constant. Shifting priorities, advancing technologies, evolving demographics, expanding business opportunities, and new ways of working all influence building functionality over time. Designing with adaptability in mind allows spaces to adjust to ever-changing needs, effectively futureproofing your investment through thoughtful, long-term flexibility.
We’re here to help you meet the challenge of balancing today’s priorities with tomorrow’s possibilities through resilient design that supports lasting performance.
Van Ness Medical Office Building
This nine-story, 211,000-square-foot LEED-CS Gold medical office building pairs a 70,000-gallon stormwater cistern with three green roofs totaling 9,925 square feet to collect and reuse stormwater, reducing stress on the City of San Francisco's combined sewer system and offering staff and patients views of nature from the urban clinics inside.
Riverside University Health System Wellness Village
The 5-building, LEED registered RUHS Wellness Village is located in a community that is anticipated to experience 147 days annually over 90ºF by mid-century. Looking to the future, the project created a resilience hub within the onsite Community Center that can provide food service, cooling, programming, resource sharing, phone charging, medication refrigeration, internet, and emergency services communications for the campus during a power outage.